Conduit Gallery is pleased to announce Catherine Howe’s solo exhibition of work: Luminous Opera. The exhibition is a collection of vividly conjured scenarios where emergent images ebb and flow; and will consist of works on mylar and canvas.

In her second exhibition at Conduit Gallery, Catherine Howe will present reverse-paintings on mylar and acrylic, and gilded paintings on canvas. The works feature a bold use of materials wedded to her calligraphic hand. They stage an action-painted nature morte with an animated cast of flora and fauna. Drawing from nature and its art histories, Howe’s ecstatic engagement with her materials is the impetus behind what is ultimately, and emphatically, direct painting. The familiar is thus transformed.

In a catalogue essay from a 2015 exhibition at VonLintel Gallery, AIA contributing editor, David Ebony remarked “Catherine Howe’s recent paintings provoke engaging dichotomies. At once anarchic and elegant, meditative and frenzied, they are, above all, exuberantly alive…The images seem to be imploding or exploding, in a constant state of flux. The subject matter, moreover, serves as a mere pretext for Howe’s exploration of a fictive space of her own invention. She aims toward what critic Michael Fried has referred to the “supreme fiction” or “ontological illusion,” suggesting that such images could come into being of their own accord, irrespective of expectations of viewers or even the demands of the artist herself.”

Born in western New York in 1959, Howe earned an MFA from SUNY Buffalo in 1983. The many publications that have reviewed her work include: Art in America, Artforum, Art Critical, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times. Howe has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe for over twenty years, including shows at: David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico (2016) Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015), Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015), Amy Simon Fine Art, Westport, CT (2014), New York Academy of Art, Allegra LaViola, and Sloan Fine Art in New York, NY (2013). Von Lintel Gallery, New York, NY (2012), Eden Rock Gallery, St. Barths (2011), Lesley Heller Workspace, New York, NY (2010), District & Co., Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (2009), Danese, New York, NY (2007) and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY (2007). Howe lives and works in New York City and the Hudson Valley.